Cole sees her first. He stops in the living room entrance with his bag on his shoulder, and his expression softens before he can catch it.
She is on the couch, asleep and curled into the corner with her knees drawn up, her body compact and taking up the minimum possible space. Her laptop is open on the cushion beside her, the cursor blinking at the end of an incomplete sentence about our neutral zone entries. She fell asleep mid-thought.
She is wearing the gray sweatshirt. Cole's. It has slipped off one shoulder, exposing the line of her collarbone in the laptopglow. Her hair falls across her face, one hand tucked under her chin, the other still resting on the keyboard, fingers curved over an unfinished sentence.
"Leave her," Cole whispers. "She'll wake up if we move her."
He squeezes my shoulder, the brief contact that says goodnight, and heads upstairs. His footsteps are deliberately heavy on the stairs. I do the same thing now. Neither of us has discussed it. We just started making noise on the stairs the first night she slept here.
His door closes.
I should follow him, shower, and let the morning come fast.
Instead, I go to the closet for the gray wool blanket Cole bought. My practice jersey is on the hook beside it, number eighty-eight, the navy mesh still carrying the cold from the rink, the name I chose printed across the shoulders. My hand closes on the wool.
I carry the blanket to the couch and unfold it over her, careful with every inch of movement because Cole is right. She will wake if I get this wrong. The wool settles over her shoulders and drawn-up knees.
My jersey is still in my hand. I do not remember taking it off the hook.
I lay it over her feet where the wool does not quite reach. Navy mesh over gray wool over Cole's sweatshirt over her skin. Nobody asked for that arrangement. My hand smooths the hem flat before I pull it back.
Her laptop glows beside her, open and unguarded. The article is on the screen, her browser behind it. Whatever else she has been building—the notes, the searches, the private system I know she keeps—is six inches from my hand.
The woman with a file on my family is asleep on my couch with her research open. I could look.
Instead, I close the laptop and set it on the coffee table beside her mug. The Barry's tea is cold now. She made it herself tonight. She knows where the kettle is, where the box is, which shelf. She moves through our kitchen like she has been here for years.
Upstairs, I stop outside Cole's door. He's awake. I hear it in the silence beyond the door, in the stillness that changes when Cole is awake. He heard me in the living room longer than a walk-through takes. He heard me stop. He knows I covered her.
From down the upstairs hall, the spare room is silent. The breathing count has not started yet. She is still downstairs on the couch, wrapped in the blanket, asleep under our roof.
I go to my room, my bed, my phone on the nightstand with Milan still printed behind my eyes.
Maya's breathing count starts an hour later. She must have woken up, found the blanket, found the jersey, left them downstairs, and gone upstairs. Cycle one.Four in, four hold, four out.I lie in the dark and listen. She found the wool and the mesh and the name on the shoulders, and she still needs the count. I can put my jersey over her feet, close her laptop, make her tea in the morning, and still the count starts.
I listen anyway.
By Wednesday morning, the blanket is folded on the arm of the couch with the corners aligned. My jersey is folded on top of it, the number facing up, the creases sharp enough that she used both hands. On top of the jersey sits a sticky note in her small, controlled handwriting.
Thank you.—M
I pick up the note.
M.One letter. Smaller than Maya. More personal than Maddox. The blanket is folded beneath it. My jersey is under her handwriting. I put the note in my pocket.
I make coffee for Cole and me, fill the kettle for Maya, and set out three mugs. The third one is a recent addition, white ceramic, placed at the edge of the counter where she will see it when she comes down.
I make eggs and set out three plates, hers first, near the edge of the counter.
She comes downstairs in Cole's sweatshirt, bare feet, her hair still pressed flat on one side from the couch cushion. She hoists herself onto the counter instead of the stool, knees drawn up, facing the door. Her phone is beside her plate, face-down, the way it has been on every surface since she arrived.
"Morning," she says.
"Morning."
She picks up the tea with both hands, and steam curls between her fingers. Last Friday in this kitchen, I swallowed words I had no right to put in her hands. Cole saidour kitchen.Maya saidyes, I'll be back tonight.
Three days later, she is barefoot on the counter with her phone face-down beside her plate, drinking tea I made because I know the shelf now. Cole's sweatshirt hangs off her shoulder. My mug is six inches from her knee.
